Sudden Jihad Syndrome

The Pit at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the pedestrian area where Taheri-azar struck.

Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers."

I wrote those words days after September 11, 2001, and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March 3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not go far enough.

That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none were severely injured.

Until his would-be murderous rampage, Mr. Taheri-azar, a philosophy and psychology major, had a seemingly normal existence and promising future. In high school, he had been student council president and a member of the National Honor Society. The Los Angeles Times writes that a number of UNC students found him "a serious student, shy but friendly." One fellow student, Brian Copeland, "was impressed with his knowledge of classical Western thought," adding, "He was kind and gentle, rather than aggressive and violent." The university chancellor, James Moeser, called him a good student, if "totally a loner, introverted and into himself."

In fact, no one who knew him said a bad word about him, which is important, for it signals that he is not some low-life, not homicidal, not psychotic, but a conscientious student and amiable person. Which raises the obvious question: Why would a regular person try to kill a random assortment of students? Mr. Taheri-azar's post-arrest remarks offer some clues.

- He told the 911 dispatcher that he wanted to "punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world."
- He explained to a detective that "people all over the world are being killed in war and now it is the people in the United States' turn to be killed."
- He said he acted to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world."
- He portrayed his actions as "an eye for an eye."
A police affidavit notes that "Taheri-azar repeatedly said that the United States government had been killing his people across the sea and that he decided to attack."
- He told a judge, "I'm thankful you're here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah."

In brief, Mr. Taheri-azar represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims. Mr. Taheri-azar acknowledged planning his jihad for more than two years, or during his university sojourn. It's not hard to imagine how his ideas developed, given the coherence of Islamist ideology, its immense reach (including a Muslim Student Association at UNC), and its resonance among many Muslims.

Were Mr. Taheri-azar unique in his surreptitious adoption of radical Islam, one could ignore his case, but he fits into a widespread pattern of Muslims who lead quiet lives before turning to terrorism. Their number includes the hijackers responsible for the attacks of September 11, the London transport bombers, and the Intel engineer arrested before he could join the Taliban in Afghanistan, Maher Hawash.

A Saudi living in Houston, Mohammed Ali Alayed, fit the pattern because he stabbed and murdered a Jewish man, Ariel Sellouk, who was his one-time friend. So do some converts to Islam; who suspected a 38-year-old Belgian woman, Muriel Degauque, would turn up in Iraq as a suicide bomber throwing herself against an American military base?

This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.

This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since September 11, 2001.

The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the "new anti-Semitism," or "Islamophobia" is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of "Germanophobia" or anti-Communists of "Russophobia." Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of "infidels."

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/010525.phpMohammed Reza Taheri-azar: Nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to cause bodily injury after plowing a sport utility vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians, saying he wanted to "spread the will of Allah" (North Carolina).
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/29/BAGAEKRCO55.DTLOmeed Aziz Popal: Murder and 18 counts of attempted murder after a hit and run spree in a sport utility vehicle through San Francisco and Fremont, CA, after which he identified himself to authorities as a "terrorist."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,252783,00.htmlIbrahim Ahmed, Nashville, TN cab driver: Assault and attempted homicide, when after an argument with two non-Muslim passengers over religion, he attempted to run them over as they walked away from the taxi. He succeeded in critically injuring one.
http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S27568.shtml?cat=206Ismail Yassin Mohamed: While driving a stolen black Chevy Cavalier, he began intentionally ramming a blue and white taxi cab for several blocks until the cab crashed. The passenger inside the cab was critically injured. Mohamed then took off in the Cavalier and crashed it into a business. He then got out of the car and stole a school van. The driver of the van managed to get an 8-year-old boy out of the vehicle before Mohamed drove off with it. Mohamed crashed the van into another group of cars. Authorities said Mohamed was trying steal another car when witnesses pinned him down and waited for police. When asked why he did this, Mohamed replied..."Allah made me do it." Police ruled out road rage as a motive (Minneapolis).
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003170287_webhaq02.htmlNaveed Afzal Haq: Aggravated first-degree murder, five counts of first-degree attempted murder, first-degree kidnapping for holding a gun to the back of a 14-year-old girl to force his way into the building; one charge of first-degree burglary and malicious harassment, the felony charge for a hate crime. Haq, stating that he was a "Muslim American, angry at Israel," barged into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, shooting six unarmed women, killing one.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36564Mohammed Ali Alayed: After experiencing a religious awakening, he murdered his Jewish friend by slashing his throat.

Sympathy for al Qaeda has produced "sudden jihad syndrome" in domestic terror cells unaffiliated with foreign terrorists and people seeking to carry out attacks in the U.S., a law-enforcement intelligence analysis says.

The Dec. 6 report by the Texas Public Safety Department's Bureau of Information Analysis warns officials not to dismiss individual or homegrown terror cells as "wannabes," saying they pose a credible threat to homeland security.

"Oftentimes, these attackers are dismissed as suffering from mental health issues, but their own words and writings reveal an affiliation with Islamic supremacy or an affinity for Islamic extremism," said the report, which was distributed to federal, state and local law enforcement in Texas. "As a result, law enforcement should not be too quick to judge their attacks as having no nexus to terrorism."

It said they might act with the intention of eventually joining al Qaeda or the jihad movement overseas.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, cited al Qaeda theorist Abu Mu'ab al Suri's book "Call to Global Islamic Resistance," in which Mu'ab al Suri noted that the future of al Qaeda terrorist fighters will depend on individual and small-group terrorists.

The intelligence analysis says homegrown groups are not purely "domestic," as their ideology is similar if not exactly like those of international terrorist groups, and cited examples such as the "Lackawanna Six." The six Yemeni-Americans who traveled to Afghan-istan before the September 11 terrorist attacks and attended the al Farooq terrorist training camp pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges.

It also cited the "Liberty City Seven" terrorist cell of Miami that planned to use explosives to bring down the Sears Tower in Chicago and then blow up the FBI field office in Miami. The group members were all U.S. citizens who adopted a global jihadist strategy.

The report includes several examples of people with "sudden jihad syndromes," such as Ali R. Warrayat, a Palestinian-Jordanian Muslim who drove his car into an Arizona Home Depot with the purpose of destroying the store and those inside it. The suspect said he would wear a Palestine flag but later decided to place the flag and a copy of the Koran inside his trunk.

School shooter studied Hamas, says friendJust over a week ago, Kazmierczak burst into a lecture hall and shot and killed five students and then himself. The New York Times reports he was taking an anti-anxiety drug and a sleeping aid in addition to the antidepressant Prozac.

A former Northern Illinois University newspaper reporter says the killer who gunned down five innocent students in an apparently unprovoked attack liked to study Arabic and the terror group Hamas.[...]"Once we took a course called 'The Politics of the Middle East.' At the beginning of the course, our instructor informed us a research paper would be due by the end of the semester. Steve decided on Hamas, which is known mainly to the world as being a Palestinian terrorist group, which was the first thing that interested Steve about the group. But he also heard Hamas funded many social services, which also interested him. How could one group be put into two completely different categories, Steve would ask," she wrote.

"Unlike most of us, Steve started his research from day one, reading every book he could find on Hamas. He'd give me a status report when we saw each other in class. Steve said that his perception of Hamas changed with all the research he did," she said.

* Dr. "Abu Hafiza"--Al-Qaeda master planner who was the brains and commander of the Moroccan cell that provided logistics for the 9/11 attacks, and he recruited Qaeda insurgents for battles in Fallujah, Moroccan psychiatrist;

* Dr. Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi--Late HAMAS leader, pediatrician;

* Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar--HAMAS co-founder and leader, surgeon and lecturer at the Islamic University in Gaza;

* Dr. George Habash--Founder and chief of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), pediatrician (which is interesting since he rocketed a school bus full of children in Avivim, Israel;

* Dr. Wadih Haddad--2nd in command of the PFLP, with Dr. Habash, and the mastermind of all of its armed terrorist operations. The strategy of terrorist hijacking as a way of attracting media attention was conceived by Haddad in 1967,

* Dr. Bashar Assad--President of Terror-sponsor state Syria, welcoming home to every Islamic terrorist group imaginable, ophthalmologist;

* Dr. Wameeth Fadhli--A University of Texas medical doctor in the Galveston/Dickonson, Texas area, he sat in his vehicle, last summer, and shot several times at a random, 22-year-old infidel bicyclist

* Drs. Laila Al-Marayati and Riad Abdelkarim--Both work with and/or are top officials of KinderUSA (son of the Holy Land Foundation), which Al-Marayati voluntarily shutdown before the FBI did, as it was openly funding HAMAS "martyrs."

* Dr. Yahyah Basha--The Muslim Medical Doctor from Syria, who lives in the Detroit area, has a history of support of terrorist groups in his capacities and head of the now-defunct American Muslim Council

* Dr. Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha--a 26-year-old neurologist who was arrested and is in custody as a suspect in the attempted London bombings, foiled Friday. He was born in Saudi Arabia, is of Palestinian origin, and has a Jordanian passport. His 27-year-old wife, a medical assistant, was also arrested for the foiled bombings;

* Dr. Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla--an Iraqi from Baghdad who was also arrested and is in custody as a suspect in the attempted Glasgow International Airport bombing, foiled Saturday. He was reportedly in the Jeep that drove into the airport, and is suffering from third-degree burns;

* Dr. Mohammed Haneef--an Indian Muslim arrested in Australia on Monday night in custody as a suspect in the attempted British terrorist bombing plots of last week;and

* The rest of the EIGHT Muslim Doctor(s) arrested as suspects in the British bombing plots of last week.

Khawaja Hasan, 33, hit the headlines in 2006 after he launched a claim of religious and racial discrimination after his dismissal for disciplinary offences. He was sacked after a series of incidents, including making checks on his family on the police national computer.[...]Hasan claimed that he had been “hounded out” of the Met on the basis of minor infringements of the rules, but that the underlying reason was discrimination.

En nu is die weer in het nieuws:

Khawaja Hasan, 33, was arrested following the attack on the 89-year-old pensioner outside his home in the village of Thurlaston, Warwickshire, last Sunday night.The unnamed victim has undergone surgery for his injuries – a broken arm, broken leg and severe bruising – and remains in hospital in a serious but stable condition.

Police say they are linking that assault with three other incidents which occurred shortly afterwards in the nearby villages of Broadwell and Leamington Hastings.These included at least two alleged hit-and-run incidents in which two victims were struck by a car. Three people were hurt in total during the attacks, but none seriously.

Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, 23, was ordered held without bail at a hearing Tuesday in Little Rock. He is charged in the death of Pvt. William Long, 23, of Conway, outside the Army Navy Career Center in Little Rock."This individual appears to have been upset with the military, the Army in particular, and that's why he did what he did," Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said."He has converted to (Islam) here in the past few years," Hastings said. "We're not completely clear on what he was upset about. He had never been in the military.

ABC News reports that federal investigators "are engaged in an intense effort to reconstruct Muhammad's path to extremism – and allegedly to murder – taking apart his life, examining his friendships, educational records, travel within the United States and possible contacts with extremists overseas."

That path should lead to Dammaj, a tribal area of Yemen, and a madrassa run by a Salafi cleric named Yahya Hajuri, a knowledgeable source told the IPT. Muhammad wanted to study at Hajuri's Al-Da'wah Center when he went to Yemen in early 2007.

He may have spent a couple of months in a Yemeni prison after being arrested for carrying a Somali passport and for overstaying his visa. In addition, Muhammad may have taken a Yemeni wife.[...]Hajuri was a protégé of Muqbil ibn Hadi, considered to be "a Salafi ideologue par excellence," before his death in 2001, wrote Noorhaidi Hasan in his book Laskar Jihad. Ibn Hadi spent nearly 20 years studying in Saudi Arabia, but returned to Yemen after a prison term served after an attack on the Meccan sanctuary.

What started as an argument over religion at a bar escalated when one man shot another five times overnight, as the victim's sister watched in horror.

Toni Simpson says she was waiting for her brother, Ernest McCullough, 29, in the 3800 block of Van Dyke Avenue at about 4:30 a.m. after a night of drinking at Nancy's Pub. She was listening to the pair argue over religion but never thought it would lead to what happened next."He pulled up his shirt and it looked like a knife and it was a gun. He pulled it out and shot him,” she said.impson says she was so shocked that she blacked out after the first two rounds were fired. When she came around she saw her brother covered in blood."I said ‘he shot you?’ And he said ‘yeah, he shot me’ and then he fell to the ground," Simpson said.

The victim, who is Christian, was taken to Scripps Mercy Hospital in serious condition but is expected to be okay.The suspect, who Simpson says was of Muslim faith, remains at large

Police arrested 22-year-old Abdul Walid Hamid of Hayward on the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 4, after he reportedly tore a crucifix from a person's neck and scared others at Stoneridge Shopping Center.Hamid, an employee at a mall kiosk near Starbucks, has been charged with battery, terrorist threats and grand theft.

According to reports, Hamid was yelling "Allah is power" and "Islam is great" while holding a pen in a fist over his head. Witnesses said he shouted anti-Christian comments, said police.Lt. Mike Elerick of the Pleasanton Police Department said the man was not provoked and didn't threaten violence, but he committed robbery when he grabbed and broke a crucifix off someone's neck.Coworkers told police that Hamid's actions were out of the ordinary and that he had worked at the kiosk for years.

Lijkt echt op een Sudden Jihad Syndrome.

Hamid was arraigned Tuesday morning at Alameda Superior Court in Pleasanton on charges of battery, grand theft, exhibition of a deadly weapon and a possible hate crime. Deputy District Attorney Ronda Theisen requested his bail remain at $27,000.Through an interpreter, Hamid requested a public defender and was scheduled to appear in court at 9 a.m. Thursday where he is expected to enter a plea.

“Nobody was worried about her committing a violent act,” said Stehlik.Fourteen-year-old Ahmed lives next door to Salim and only knows a friendly lady whose kids were friends with her sisters.“She’d greet us every morning … and she’d get to know us,” said Ahmed.Now the question everyone wants answered is why a woman who was not seen as a threat suddenly became violent.

En gewelddadig werd ze opeens:

Two people were stabbed in a seemingly random attack at a Twin Cities library.After the incident Wednesday night at the Oxboro Library in Bloomington, 35-year-old Samira Abdalla Salim was arrested.Salim was no stranger to the Oxboro Library. She had a reputation for handing out the Koran and talking religion outside the building.

Islamic rages aimed at enslaving the westSix U.S. military men have been murdered by Afghan security forces seized by what may be labeled Quran-Burning Rage.

These murders are an outrage in and of themselves, but it's crucial we don't see them as isolated. They fit into a pattern that above all spreads "dhimmitude," the submissive state of Christians and Jews (known under Islam as the "dhimmi") in thrall to Islamic law.

Pastor Jones Rage followed "Fitna" Rage, which seized Muslims worldwide even before the release of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders' short 2008 film "Fitna." That film sparked rioting, arson, boycotts, death threats and, as a bonus, charges that led to the protracted trial in the Netherlands of Wilders for "insulting Muslims." (He was acquitted in 2011.)

Spoiler! :

"Fitna" Rage followed Teddy Bear Rage, which, in 2007, seized Muslims in Sudan after a British teacher, whose class named a teddy bear "Muhammad," was sentenced to 15 days for "insulting religion." Ten thousand Sudanese turned out to call for the teacher's head instead.

Teddy Bear Rage followed Pope Rage, which seized Muslims after a 2006 address in which Pope Benedict XVI noted a historic reference to Islam's propensity to spread by violence. Muslim rioting, arson (including church burnings) and the murder of a 65-year-old Italian nun in Somalia ensued.

All of these rages followed or coincided with the most sustained rage of all, Danish Muhammad Cartoon Rage, which, since the 2005 publication of a dozen Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper, has seized countless Muslims in recurring waves of rioting, boycotts and arson. More than 100 deaths have resulted.

I could continue, but I think the pattern is clear. Critical discussion or representation of Islam -- including stated facts; satirical, political or religious commentary; or acts deemed by Islam to be "blasphemy" or "desecration" -- spur Muslims to violence. This violence spurs Westerners to apology. But apology is always an act of dhimmitude: submitting to Islamic definitions of crime or grievance that only under Islamic law require contrition.

Today, the pattern intensifies. Muslim violence is more brazen with the murders of American troops, and Western apologies are more exaggerated. The United States hasn't even quashed Afghan demands for a trial of those who last month disposed of several Qurans.

Meanwhile, the chorus for punishment grows. "After the first step of a profound apology, there must be a second step ... of disciplinary action," Jan Kubis, the United Nations representative in Afghanistan, said this week. "Only after this, after such a disciplinary action, can the international forces say, 'Yes, we're sincere in our apology.'"

Or, rather, yes, we're sincere in our dhimmitude.

Demonstrating his own "sincerity," Kubis continued: "We deeply, deeply, profoundly respect Islam. ... We were very hurt that the international military allowed the desecration of the Quran. We rejected and condemned this act; it doesn't matter that it was a mistake."

Kubis' example is most instructive. Speaking for the United Nations, he mimics the aggrievement of Islam. Indeed, Islam's aggrievement becomes the United Nations' own as it draws power from the demonstrably more kinetic Islamic position.

The fact is, this whole affair, like those that preceded it, is a power play. Feigned victimhood becomes a trap for the "perpetrator" -- in this case, the U.S. military. Falling for the trap means submitting to violent Islamic dictates for exactly the same reason a co-dependent family member submits to dictates of a mentally ill relative -- to stop the outburst, to make it all "better," even if "better" is only a lull before the next power play.

Just as such actions bring a co-dependent family member more closely into the behavioral orbit of the sick family member, they bring the United States more closely into the behavioral orbit regulated by Islamic law. They force the "perpetrator" into accepting the sacredness of an inanimate object; they force the "perpetrator" into accepting the Islamic position that aùChristian or Jew is unfit (unclean) to dispose of the sacred thing without desecrating it. They force the "perpetrator" to accept the Islamic belief that such "desecration" constitutes a crime of literally capital proportions.

They force the "perpetrator" to act Islamic. This is the pattern of dhimmitude, and we must break it.

Diana West is the author of "The Death of the Grown-up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization," and blogs at dianawest.net. She can be contacted via [email protected].

Famagusta District Court heard the police claim that three British passport holders had ‘a score to settle’ with Mr Collins and his comrades after an angry exchange in a pub in Ayia Napa Square, which was supposed to be out of bounds for British service personnel.Cypriot newspaper Phileleftheros claimed that the exchange was ‘racist’, while another, Simerini, said it was the culmination of a petty argument.

Re: Sudden Jihad Syndrome

Starbucks stabbing suspect may have been motivated by religious extremism (with video)A 55-year-old suspect in the stabbing of two people in a Starbucks coffee shop drive-thru at one of the busiest intersections in Clark County may have been motivated by religious extremism, according to a probable cause affidavit.[...]Hamza A. Shariati, 21, told police that he had met Fandrich at about 2 p.m. Monday to discuss religion. During their conversation at one of the cafe’s tables, Kush approached and chatted with Fandrich about cars and religion.When Kush got up and left, Fandrich followed him out of the building, Shariati said.Shariati told police that Fandrich had made statements in the past about “his willingness to die for Islam.” He said he knows that Fandrich “has conflicts with people.”

Kush was stabbed at least five times in the neck, abdomen and the side of the chest and had to undergo emergency surgery Monday night at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center.Bystanders tried to intervene and stop Fandrich, according to earlier reports by The Columbian. One of them, Jerry Nehnevaj, 49, was stabbed in the right lower leg when he attempted to grab Fandrich and pull him off of Kush, according to the affidavit.